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A German-American's 
Confession of Faith 



A German-American's 
Confession of Faith 



By 

Kuno Francke 

Curator of The Germanic Museum of 
Harvard University 




New York 

B. W. Huebsch 

MCMXV 






Copyright, 1915 
By B. W. Huebsch 



OCT II 1915 
©CI.A411917 



FOREWORD 

In view of the bitter and ill informed criti- 
cism which my stand during the present war has 
evoked from many Germans and German- 
Americans, I think it a duty both to myself and 
to the cause which I represent to bring together 
at least some of the documents in which my 
course of action is contained. They consist of 
articles and other kinds of contributions to vari- 
ous magazines and newspapers between October 
1 9 14 and May 191 5, dealing successively with 
the following topics: the moral and spiritual 
forces of contemporary Germany, the question 
of American neutrality, the duties of German- 
Americans both toward the land of their fathers 
and their adopted country, the mission of 
America for the peace of Europe. 

Slight as are these contributions to the litera- 
ture of the great world conflict that engulfs us, 
they are at least inspired by the endeavor to be 
loyal to obligations old and new. 



One word I wish to add here regarding the 
exportation of arms and munitions of war. 

That this traffic, in spite of its international 
legality, is as vicious and hideous to me as to 
anybody, may be taken for granted. That in 
the present war this traffic, carried on upon a 
colossal scale by American firms, should bring 
death and destruction to thousands upon thou- 
sands of Germans and should seriously injure 
the cause with whose triumph all my hopes and 
desires are bound up, is a thought from which 
I suffer fully as much as any of my German- 
American compatriots. 

But it is one thing to condemn individuals 
carrying on this hideous traffic, and another to 
hold our Government responsible for it. Only 
under two conditions would our Government be 
justified in suppressing it. First, if the nation 
were a unit in demanding its suppression upon 
humanitarian grounds. To my regret, this is 
not the case. The American people is so 
divided in its sympathies that the arguments 
for or against an embargo on arms have been 
made, up to the present, almost exclusively in 
the interest of one or the other of the belliger- 
ent powers. The manifest intention of our 



Government to recognize the claims of human- 
ity and to work for international good will has, 
therefore, thus far not received that strong 
popular support which would enable it to take 
a pronounced stand in this matter. 

Secondly, our Government might very prop- 
erly consider the advisability of prohibiting 
the shipment of arms, as a retaliatory measure 
for English encroachments upon American 
trade. At what point our national interests 
would require our Government to take such a 
step, is a question which I feel unable to an- 
swer. But I cannot help expressing my ardent 
hope that a wave of popular indignation di- 
rected against one class of American manufac- 
turers deriving financial profit from the ruin of 
Europe will strengthen the efforts of our Gov- 
ernment to save our whole nation from becom- 
ing a tool in the hands of English world do- 
minion. 

Kuno Francke. 

May so, 1915, 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Kaiser and His People ... 3 

II Germany's Hope 21 

III Ruf aus Ubersee 33 

IV Neutrality 37 

V The Duty of German-Americans . 45 

VI The United States as a Peacemaker 53 

VII Gebet 67 

VIII Germania Martyr 71 



I. THE KAISER AND HIS PEOPLE 




A GERMAN-AMERICAN'S 
CONFESSION OF FAITH 

I. THE KAISER AND HIS PEOPLE * 

'HOEVER or whatever may have been 
immediately responsible for the terrible 
cataclysm, which in the midst of harvest time, 
like a Doomsday of nations, has befallen Eu- 
rope and all mankind, there can be no question 
that German ascendancy of the last half cen- 
tury has been its ultimate cause. It therefore 
behooves Germans above all others, with fear 
and trembling, but without flinching or subter- 
fuge, to search their hearts and to ask them- 
selves whether they can really go into this con- 
flict with a clear conscience and with trust in the 
justice of their cause. 

Whether German diplomacy under the regime 

* Reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly, October, 1914. 

3 



of the present Emperor has been equal to its 
task, whether its efforts to guard and to increase 
the Bismarckian legacy of 1870 have always 
been guided by Bismarckian foresight and Bis- 
marckian sense of the attainable, is a question 
that only history will be able to decide. Cer- 
tain It is that the guidance of German destiny 
since the retirement of the great Chancellor has 
been confronted with well-nigh insuperable diffi- 
culties. On the one hand, a people brimming 
over with physical and intellectual vitality, 
flushed with military and industrial success, 
eager for activity in every field of enterprise 
and in all parts of the globe. On the other 
hand, a formidable array of obstacles against 
the peaceful and natural expansion of this peo- 
ple: France, unwilling to forget her national 
humiliation, unequivocally refusing to acknowl- 
edge the settlement of 1870 as final, incessantly 
preparing for the day of revenge, persistently 
attempting to form threatening alliances against 
her hated foe; England, nettled by German 
business smartness, alarmed by German naval 
strength, trying to isolate and check and hem 
in the upstart in his every move; Russia, deeply 
resentful of the setback received at the Berlin 

4 



Congress in her march to Constantinople, de- 
termined to use the Slav upheaval in the Bal- 
kans as a means of pushing forward to the 
Adriatic, and thereby throttling German influ- 
ence in the East. These are the international 
difficulties under which the new Germany has 
had to struggle onward. 

What has been the consequence of this op- 
pressively difficult situation? How has Ger- 
many met it? What intellectual and moral 
forces has this situation brought into play? 

No unprejudiced observer of German affairs, 
I believe, will deny that it is this very difficulty 
of maintaining her national preeminence which 
has given to contemporary Germany a feeling 
of solidarity and of public responsibility, an 
eager earnestness, a concentrated will-power, a 
sweep and momentum of constructive imagina- 
tion such as no other nation of to-day possesses. 
After centuries of national weakness and ob- 
scurity, the German could at last feel again that 
he was a part of a great and progressive empire. 
Wherever he went abroad — as farmer, as busi- 
ness man, as colonial administrator, as sailor, 
as scholar and teacher — he felt behind him this 
new empire, surrounded by rivalry and un- 

5 



friendliness, but steadfastly holding its own, 
steadfastly working at the enrichment of its re- 
sources, the improvement of its social conditions, 
the strengthening of its manhood. And when 
he returned to his native land, he would see with 
joy and gratitude that not only in military or- 
ganization, but in every kind of public and pri- 
vate activity, in city-planning, in care for the 
poor, in industrial cooperation, in scientific farm- 
ing and forestry, in research of every kind, in 
every form of popular instruction, in literature 
and the fine arts, Germany was striding ahead 
of the rest of the world. 

Seldom has an individual been so perfect an 
embodiment of a national movement as Em- 
peror William II is of this new Germany. All 
his acts and utterances have been inspired by 
the one desire of developing German character 
to its utmost. It is impossible to go through 
the four volumes of his " Speeches and Ad- 
dresses ' without being profoundly impressed 
with the indomitable striving for national great- 
ness incarnated in this man. Richard Wag- 
ner's Parsifal and the Nietzschean Superman 
seem combined in him. Every phase of life 
6 



appeals to him; and in every phase of life he 
wants his Germans to excel. 

He admonishes schoolboys to think of what 
their country will need of them when they are 
men, to abstain from alcohol, to strengthen 
their bodies and minds by hard work and hard 
sport, to strive after that harmony of life which 
the Greeks possessed and which " is sadly lack- 
ing to-day." He appeals to school-teachers to 
make their pupils above all at home in the 
things nearest at hand, to make achievement 
rather than knowledge the goal of instruction. 
He holds up to university students the spiritual 
heroes of the German past, from Walther von 
der Vogelweide to Schiller and Goethe, and 
warns them " not to waste their strength in cos- 
mopolitan dreams, or in one-sided party service, 
but to exert it to make stable the national idea 
and to foster the noblest German thoughts." 
His own sons he urges to labor incessantly to 
make themselves true personalities, taking as 
their guide Jesus, " the most personal of all 
personalities," to make their work a source of 
joy to their fellowmen — " for there is nothing 
more beautiful than to take pleasure jointly with 

7 



others " — and where this is impossible, to make 
their work contribute at least something useful. 
Upon his officers he impresses the extreme ne- 
cessity of firmness of character; for "victories 
are won by spiritual strength." 

Addressing the large mine-owners of Prussia, 
he insists that it is the duty of the State to regu- 
late " the protection which the workingman 
should enjoy against an arbitrary and limitless 
exploitation of his labor; the limitation of 
child-labor with reference to the dictates of hu- 
manity and of the laws of natural development; 
the position of woman in the house of the labor- 
ing man, which is morally and economically of 
the greatest importance for the family life." 

Speaking to the professors of the University 
of Berlin, he points out the need of " institu- 
tions that transcend the limits of a university 
and serve nothing but research, free from the 
demands made by instruction, although in close 
touch with the university." At a gathering of 
German sculptors and painters he proclaims that 
" art should be a help and an educational force 
for all classes of our people, giving them the 
chance, when they are tired after hard labor, 
of growing strong by the contemplation of ideal 
8 



things. Attention to ideals is one of the great- 
est tasks of culture, and all our people must 
work at it, if we are to set a good example to 
the other nations; for culture, in order to do 
its task well, must permeate every stratum of 
society. But it cannot do this if art refuses its 
help and pushes people into the gutter instead 
of elevating them.' , 

The need of human fellowship and mutual 
forbearance for national purposes he impresses 
upon a Westphalian audience by reference to 
personal experiences : " During my long reign 
I have had to do with many people, and have 
suffered much at their hands; often they have 
hurt me unconsciously, but often also, I regret 
to say it, very intentionally. When in such mo- 
ments my anger threatened to master me and I 
was tempted to avenge myself, I have asked 
myself, how best can wrath be stilled and charity 
grow strong? I have found only one answer, 
and that was based on the observation that all 
men are human and even if they hurt us, they 
have souls given them from on high, whither 
all of us wish to return. Thanks to their souls, 
they too carry with them parts of the Creator." 
And at the Prize Singing Contest at Frank- 

9 



fort, for male choruses, instituted by him, in 
the presence of thousands of singers of all 
classes of society he extols the simplicity of the 
good old German folk-song against the artifi- 
ciality and affectedness of modern tone-paint- 
ings, and he thanks among the singers partic- 
ularly the " men of the brawny hand, the large 
number of men who have come from the ham- 
mer, the anvil, and the forge. They must have 
sacrificed to this work the sleep of many a 
night." 

Perhaps the most impressive, however, of 
all these utterances and the one most charac- 
teristic of contemporary German feeling, is a 
passage from a speech delivered soon after the 
Emperor's return from Palestine. " During 
my stay in that foreign country, where we Ger- 
mans miss the woods and the beautiful sheets 
of water which we love, I often thought of the 
lakes of Brandenburg and their clear, somber 
depths, and of our forests of oaks and pines. 
And then I said to myself, that after all we 
are far happier here than in foreign lands, al- 
though the people of Europe often pity us. 
Surely many and varied experiences of an ele- 
vating nature I have had in that country, partly 
10 



religious, partly historical, and partly also con- 
nected with modern life. My most inspiring 
experience, however, was to stand on the Mount 
of Olives, and see the spot where the greatest 
struggle ever fought in the world, the struggle 
for the redemption of mankind, was fought out 
by one man. This experience induced me to 
renew on that day my oath of allegiance, as it 
were, to God on high. I vowed to do my very 
best to knit my people together, and to destroy 
whatever tended to disintegrate them." 

These are the utterances of an individual. 
But they are typical of what millions of Ger- 
mans feel, what Germany as a nation feels. 
Nothing could be more erroneous than to think 
that German ascendancy of the last genera- 
tion had been merely industrial and commer- 
cial. A new idealism, a substantial enthusiasm 
for good government, for social justice, for 
beauty and joy, for fullness and richness of in- 
dividual character, have accompanied it. 

Can there be any doubt that Germany to- 
day is the best governed country of the world? 
How utterly absurd it is to speak of the present 
conflict — as many American newspapers do — 
as a conflict between military despotism, repre- 

ii 



sented by Germany, and peaceful democracy, 
represented by the strange partnership of Rus- 
sia, Japan, England, and France. How sad it 
is to see men like Bergson and Maeterlinck so 
hopelessly deluded as to invoke their country- 
men against " the German barbarians, the en- 
emy of mankind/' Where in Germany is 
there a parallel to the travesties upon justice 
to which the decisions of French courts and 
juries, from the degradation of Dreyfus to the 
acquittal of Mme. Caillaux, have accustomed 
the world? Where in Germany is there — or 
at least has there been until this dreadful War 
engulfed her — a brutalized proletariat such 
as is the specter of London and Liverpool? 
Where in Germany is there anything compara- 
ble to the astounding corruption of official Rus- 
sia, made manifest in the Russo-Japanese war? 
It is certainly not an accident, that neither Syn- 
dicalism, so rampant both in France and Eng- 
land, nor Anarchism, the terror of Russian au- 
tocracy, has gained any foothold on German 
soil. The enthusiasm for good government, 
shared alike by Liberals, Conservatives, Cleri- 
cals, and Socialists, has prevented it. Indeed, 
the Emperor on the one hand, the Socialist 

12 



party on the other, are the two most unimpeach- 
able witnesses to the passionate German zeal 
for good government. 

The German Socialists of to-day are some- 
thing entirely different from what they were 
thirty or forty years ago. They have ceased 
to be revolutionary; they have become a party 
of constructive reform. They contain the in- 
tellectual and moral elite of the German work- 
ingmen. They are performing a most valua- 
ble service in raising the standard of life and 
the level of citizenship of the whole laboring 
class. They are devoting their energy, not to 
Utopian dreams or, as the I. W. W. are doing 
in this country, to the propaganda of destruc- 
tion, but to practical tasks of economic organ- 
ization, such as the establishment of vast co- 
operative societies and the introduction of com- 
pulsory life-insurance for all union members, and 
to educational enterprises of all sorts. As 
members of the city councils in all the larger 
German towns, they are exerting a strong and 
wholesome influence upon city administration 
all over the Empire, and as the strongest single 
party in the Reichstag they take an important 
part in national legislation, mostly with the op- 

13 



position, but not exclusively so. For it will be 
remembered that the Socialist party voted for 
the extraordinary tax bill of 19 12, needed to 
carry out the military reform of that year. And 
it seems most probable that the assertion of the 
German Chancellor that the Socialist party in 
the present catastrophe is loyally standing by 
the national defense, is literally true. Indeed, 
it was a member of the Socialist party who, at 
the special Reichstag session of August 4, moved 
the adoption of the government's bill for a war 
appropriation — a motion which was carried 
without a dissenting voice. 

Only in one point have the Socialists unflinch- 
ingly and unrelentingly arrayed themselves 
against the present governmental system, and in 
doing so they are laying bare the one grave 
defect of imperial Germany: the arrogance and 
overbearing of the military and bureaucratic 
class. Closely allied as this defect is with the 
sterling rectitude and splendid efficiency of Ger- 
man military and civil officials, it is an anomaly 
in modern Germany. One effect of the stu- 
pendous sacrifices to which the entire nation is 
now being summoned, will be to sweep away 
the artificial barriers which until now have prc- 

14 



vented Germany from reaping the full fruit of 
her otherwise unequalled methods of govern- 
ment. 

But it is not only in good government and 
social efficiency that Germany during the last 
forty years has outstripped most other coun- 
tries: German ascendancy has also manifested 
itself with striking rapidity and massiveness in 
the things that make for beauty and joy and 
the adornment of life. While Paris architec- 
turally still retains the stamp of the second Em- 
pire, London that of the Victorian era, and 
while in the French provinces and the smaller 
English towns building proceeds at a slow pace 
and along old lines, Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, 
Hanover, Cologne, Kassel, Darmstadt, Frank- 
fort, Nuremberg, Munich, not to speak of many 
other German towns, have undergone veritable 
revolutions during the last generation : new city 
halls, theaters, opera-houses, museums, univer- 
sity buildings, hospitals, railway stations, de- 
partment stores, stately mansions and model 
cottages, have arisen everywhere, and in it all 
a new and typically German style of architec- 
ture seems to be developing. Much of it is 
heavy. But there certainly is not any longer 

15 



that academic imitation and formal eclecticism 
of pseudo-Gothic and pseudo-Renaissance mem- 
ory; there is abundant evidence of original and 
powerful imagination, and an unmistakable 
striving for stateliness, proportion, symmetry, 
and sweep of outline. And a similar reaching 
out toward high goals is to be found in the other 
arts. 

What other country is there in which the 
drama, the opera, and the orchestra exert as 
deep and noble an influence as in Germany, with 
its multitude of princely or civic theaters, its 
careful training for the theatrical and musical 
professions, its well-informed and reverently re- 
ceptive audiences? In what other country could 
have happened what Professor Max Fried- 
laender of Berlin University told me happened 
to him some years ago ? He was invited by a 
club of workingmen in the Krupp iron works at 
Essen to deliver to them a lecture on some mu- 
sical subject. He accepted the invitation, and 
held an audience of more than a thousand 
workmen and their families — most of them un- 
doubtedly of socialistic persuasion — for over 
an hour listening attentively to his presentation 
of Johann Sebastian Bach. These men are now 
16 



in the regiments that have been hurled against 
the forts of Liege and Namur. 

Finally. Is it a presumption to say that 
there is more honest striving for fullness of in- 
dividual character in Germany than in other 
countries? I believe that there is; and I be- 
lieve that this also is a part of that eager con- 
test for ascendancy in which Germany has grad- 
ually outdistanced her neighbors — outdis- 
tanced, but not threatened. 

Is she now to be made to pay for all her 
efforts at self-improvement? Have these ef- 
forts not been more than merely national 
achievements? Have they not been a gain to 
humanity at large? Must she defend these 
achievements against a world in arms? If this 
desperate situation has been brought about by 
the very best there is in German character, then 
it must be accepted as part of the tragedy of 
human greatness ; and the only help left to Ger- 
many and her Emperor is to cling to the Hora- 
tian, — 

Si fractus illabatur orbis, 
Impavidum ferient ruinae. 



n 



II. GERMANY'S HOPE 



II. GERMANY'S HOPE * 

IN accepting the invitation of the Editors of 
The Harvard Monthly to say a few words 
by way of comment on Mr. Norman Hapgood's 
indictment of Germany, I shall avoid being con- 
troversial. Indeed, I shall confine myself to 
placing by the side of what to Mr. Hapgood's 
mind is Germany's disease what to my mind is 
Germany's hope. 

It cannot be denied that, superficially consid- 
ered, there is some truth in Mr. Hapgood's 
diagnosis of the mental condition of contem- 
porary Germany as being a case of national 
Megalomania. If we think of the men that 
have stood out preeminently as leaders of Ger- 
man thought and action during the last forty 
years, the most striking type that presents itself 

* Reprinted from The Harvard Monthly, November, 1914. 
The article was called forth by an arraignment of Germany 
by Mr. Norman Hapgood, published in the same magazine, 
under the title, " Germany's Disease." 

21 



is certainly that of a highly sensitive, strained, 
feverishly active state of mind. Richard Wag- 
ner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emperor William II 

— perhaps the three men whose influence has 
shaped the feelings and the ideals of the pres- 
ent generation of Germans most conspicuously 

— each in his own way are types of an excep- 
tionally developed excitability, of a nervous ten- 
sion so extraordinary that the acknowledged 
leadership of these men may indeed appear as 
a symptom of a too high strung condition of the 
national temper. 

Richard Wagner's world is a world of reck- 
less self-assertion, boundless appetite, mystic 
longing, incessant willing and striving. His 
heroes storm through life regardless of good 
or evil, impelled by the one desire of living 
themselves out to the full and of bringing out 
what is in them. Nietzsche's philosophy is an 
ecstatic appeal to the selfish instinct, a dithyram- 
bic glorification of the primitive craving for 
power, an impassioned and contemptuous ar- 
raignment of everything that makes for humil- 
ity and kindliness. Emperor William is the 
most intense and the most ardent champion of 
personal rule that has arisen since Napoleon, 
22 



a man fairly consumed with the ambition of 
bringing Germany to the front in every sphere 
of activity, a mind teeming with an endless va- 
riety of suggestions, ideas, plans, volitions. It 
would seem, then, that here there are three 
types of character whose effect upon the na- 
tional imagination just because of its unques- 
tionable strength and momentum it is hard for 
the ordinary observer not to view with alarm. 
It is natural that they should appear as repre- 
sentatives of an unsafe, unsound, abnormal view 
of life. 

Have these apprehensions been substanti- 
ated? Has the influence of these men upon 
German imagination really been baneful? 
Have these men themselves proved to be as 
unsafe and erratic as they seem? I think not. 

Richard Wagner in his autobiography has 
stated with perfect frankness that his whole life 
was dominated by the one desire to perform 
fully the task which his own nature impelled him 
to perform, and that he was ready at all times to 
sacrifice everything and everybody standing in 
the way of this task. But if this had not been 
so, if he had not magnified his own self, if he had 
not felt the dominating impulse of self-expres- 

23 



sion and had not concentrated all his powers 
upon this one supreme effort, how could he 
possibly have produced those stupendous edi- 
fices of sound which are probably the greatest 
artistic achievement of our time and which will 
be an unfailing source of wonder, awe, ecstasy 
and inspiration for all times to come? 

Nietzsche's self-exaltation, or rather self- 
apotheosis, his fanatic condemnation of Kantian 
idealism as utterly foolish and vicious, his in- 
sistence upon moral nihilism as the only safe 
basis of true morality, his oracular prophecies 
of the complete transformation of life to be 
brought about by his own reversal of all moral 
values, seem clear indications of a monomaniac 
temper. But if he had not been possessed by 
this one controlling instinct to create new moral 
values, how could he have lived as he did, de- 
fying with absolute calm the universal indiffer- 
ence of his contemporaries, retiring like an 
anchorite of old into the hallowed solitude of 
intellectual mountain heights, consecrating his 
whole existence with undivided fervor to his 
vision of a new race of men, a race of men in 
whom the conception of self will be so expanded 
and exalted that selfishness will indeed become 
24 



the one cardinal virtue and the only safe law of 
conduct ? 

And Emperor William? It is easy enough 
to point to many of his utterances as evidences 
of an uncontrolled craving for power or an ex- 
travagant glorification of his own mission. But 
the fact remains that this very self-exaltation, 
this very glorification of his office have given 
to the career of this apparently erratic man a 
consistency, an earnestness, a moral enthusiasm 
and momentum which raise him far above all 
the other rulers of our time and which have 
made him the very incarnation of the eager, 
active, calm and disciplined Germany of to-day. 

In other words, these three men are a new 
illustration of the old truth that in order to 
possess greatness you must be possessed by it; 
that there is no genius without a certain megalo- 
mania ; and that the true genius makes this very 
self-overestimation an incentive for ceaseless 
self-discipline and self-denying devotion to 
work, and thereby rises to his own true self. 

What is the application of all this to the 
German national mind as a whole? It is this. 

The German national mind also may be said 
to be in a condition of an exceptionally height- 

25 



ened self-consciousness and an exceptionally 
heightened nervous tension. Indeed, the Ger- 
man conception of the State and its mission and 
of the service due to it is something which to 
members of other nationalities, especially to 
Anglo-Saxons and Americans, cannot help ap- 
pearing as extravagant and overstrained. To 
the Anglo-Saxon and the American, the State 
is an institution for the protection and safe- 
guarding of the happiness of individuals. To 
the German, it is a spiritual collective personal- 
ity, leading a life of its own, beyond and above 
the life of individuals, and its aim is not the pro- 
tection of the happiness of individuals, but their 
elevation to a nobler type of manhood and 
their training for the achievement of great com- 
mon tasks in all the higher concerns of life — 
in popular education, in military service, in com- 
munal and industrial organization, in scientific 
inquiry, in artistic culture. This conception of 
the State, as embracing all the higher activities 
of man, goes back to the regeneration of the 
German people after the collapse of the old 
Empire under the onslaught of Napoleon. It 
was born from the stress of need, from the bit- 
ter necessity to summon all the powers of the 
26 



nation, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, 
against the threatened ruin from Napoleonic 
dominion. But it has outlived the Napoleonic 
era, it has grown apace with the growth of the 
German nation in the nineteenth century, and 
it is to-day perhaps the most powerful incentive 
for every kind of activity that agitates the 
Fatherland. 

This conception of the State may seem mys- 
tic, fantastic, extravagant. But the fact re- 
mains that the best of German national indi- 
viduality is intimately allied with it. It may be 
something of an intoxication, a chimera, a 
frenzy. If so, it is a stern and exalted frenzy, 
a frenzy which is constantly converting itself 
into tireless effort, unending devotion to duty, 
unbounded readiness for self-sacrifice, unceas- 
ing work for self-improvement, patient self-dis- 
cipline. 

Mr. Hapgood expresses the belief that " Ger- 
many has actually led civilization recently in 
more lines than any other nation." If this is 
true (and I believe it is), the reason for this 
preeminence lies in the fact that there is no 
nation which has so high a conception of the 
State, in which the sense of the obligation of the 

27 



individual to the common weal is developed to 
so high a pitch as in Germany. 

The German schoolboy feels the obligation 
to make himself an efficient and well-equipped 
German man. The German youth rejoices in 
the obligation in common with all other Ger- 
man youths, from the sons of the Emperor to 
the cobbler's son, to serve in arms for the na- 
tional defense. The German city administra- 
tor feels the obligation of making his particular 
town a model of healthfulness, decency, and 
beauty. The German legislator feels the ob- 
ligation of protecting the masses of the people 
against the injurious and degrading effects of 
industrialism and of thereby increasing national 
strength. The German government feels the 
obligation of holding itself above the parties 
and of thereby making all national legislation 
a result of compromise, between the parties, for 
the common good. All classes of the German 
people feel the obligation of excelling in pru- 
dence, frugality, foresight, respectability, hon- 
est workmanship, and of thereby adding to the 
prosperity and the good name of Germany. It 
is impossible for a German to think of any one 
of the many forms of national activity — be 
28 



they educational, military, administrative, com- 
mercial, scientific, artistic, and what not — as 
dissociated from the rest. They are all one; 
they are all instruments not so much of human 
happiness as of human achievement. And it is 
the feeling of their oneness, it is the feeling of 
solidarity, of the common responsibility of all 
these various activities toward the higher Ger- 
man self, represented in the State, which gives 
to Germany what I believe is her moral su- 
periority over her rivals and enemies. 

This higher type of national consciousness 
is Germany's contribution to the history of po- 
litical ideals. It is something essentially new. 
It is the hope in which rests Germany's future. 
It will sustain her in the gigantic war which, 
against her will, she has been forced to fight 
against half the world. Victor or vanquished, 
she will pursue her way, guided by this hope. 



29 



III. RUF AUS UBERSEE 



III. RUF AUS UBERSEE * 

Nun soil aus alien Weiten 
Erschallen ein einzig Wort, 
Soil iiber die Meere schreiten 
Mit Sturmeswehen fort. 

Nun soil aus alien Fernen 
Erschallen ein einziger Schrei, 
Auf dass die Volker lernen, 
Wes Geists Alldeutschland sei. 

Nun soil aus tiefsten Noten, 
Aus Qualen dumpf und bang, 
Aus briinstigen Gebeten 
Ergliihn ein einziger Drang. 

O Gott, du kannst nicht dulden, 
Dass deutsche Art vergeht; 
Du kannst es nicht verschulden, 
Dass deutsche Kraft verweht. 

* Reprinted from the Leipzig Illustrirte Zeitung, February 
25. 

33 



Du kannst es nicht erlauben, 
Dass deutscher Glaube stirbt; 
Du lasst ihn uns nicht rauben, 
Den Geist, der nicht verdirbt. 

O Volk, du ohnegleichen, 
Umrast von Grimmes Hauf, 
Aus deiner Sonne Leichen 
Bluht dir das Leben auf. 



34 



IV. NEUTRALITY 




IV. NEUTRALITY * 

Y dear Mr. Bartholdt: 

I am sorry that I must decline taking 
part in the conference on Jan. 30 to which you 
were good enough to invite me. I would beg, 
however, that the following remarks be read 
at the conference, so that my position with re- 
gard to the questions raised by your circular 
note be clearly understood by those present. 
And in case there are to be newspaper reports 
of the transactions of the conference, I would 
beg that this letter of mine also be published. 

I fully believe in the righteousness of the 
German cause in the present world conflict, and 
I shall avail myself of every opportunity, as I 
have done before, to express publicly my fer- 
vent hope that Germany and her Austro-Hun- 

*This letter to Congressman Bartholdt, dated January 
28, was sent by me simultaneously to the New Yorker Staats- 
Zeitung, the New York Times, and the Boston Transcript. 
But only the two last named papers published it. 

37 



garian ally will remain victorious in a struggle 
forced upon them by the aggression of a most 
unnatural coalition of powers, held together by 
nothing but irrational fear of German ascend- 
ancy. 

I believe that the prominent part taken by 
England in this coalition is a crime against civ- 
ilization. For, if successful, it would lead to 
the ruin of a country which for the last fifty 
years has excelled all other countries in every 
kind of public service, social organization and 
peaceful enterprise, and which is a shining illus- 
tration of the beneficial effects of good govern- 
ment upon the development of civic virtue, per- 
sonal worth and popular prosperity. 

I deeply deplore, therefore, the gross and 
ignorant misrepresentations of German achieve- 
ments and German aspirations of which a large 
part of the American press has made itself 
guilty. That none of these misrepresentations 
is more deliberately ignorant than the assertion 
that the present war is a war for popular free- 
dom against German autocracy should be clear 
to every one who remembers that the most for- 
midable member of the anti-German coalition 
is Russia. 

38 



My sympathies, therefore, in this war are 
wholly and fervently on the German side. But 
my German sympathies cannot make me forget 
what seem to me my duties as an American citi- 
zen. 

I believe it would be against my duties as an 
American citizen if I were to take part in a 
propaganda the purpose of which will be 
thought to be to force our Government into a 
hostile attitude toward England. Your circu- 
lar letter speaks of England as " America's 
arch-enemy." It calls for a " new Declaration 
of Independence " which is to " eliminate all 
undue English influence from our American 
life." And it protests " against the continued 
traffic in arms and ammunitions of war which 
practically arrays our country on the side of 
England." 

I do not wish to emphasize the fact that the 
proclamation of an embargo on arms and am- 
munitions of war would be an altogether illu- 
sory thing. Arms and other implements of 
war would, if our Government established an 
embargo on them, be shipped from this country 
to Havana or to Vigo, or to some other neutral 
port, and would reach their destination from 

39 



there without any hindrance. What I do wish 
to emphasize is that the establishment of such 
an embargo would inevitably bring our Govern- 
ment into conflict with England and might drive 
us into war with England. 

As a man of German blood I might welcome 
the help which would accrue to Germany by 
such a conflict between the United States and 
England. But as an American citizen I cannot 
possibly support a policy which would bring the 
terrors of war to our own country. 

What I feel bound to support, as an Ameri- 
can citizen, is a policy which holds itself strictly 
within the now accepted rules of neutrality, al- 
though, to my regret, this policy, through cir- 
cumstances over which the United States has no 
control, practically turns out to the advantage 
of England and to the detriment of Germany. 

There is another point in your circular letter 
in which, as an American citizen, I feel bound 
to disagree with you. You say that " an em- 
phatic protest should be entered against every 
attempted discrimination against the many mil- 
lions of our citizens who happen to bear non- 
English names." If by these many millions 
you mean citizens of German descent, I fail to 
40 



see what you mean by attempted discrimination 
against them. That there is a strong anti-Ger- 
man feeling in this country at the present mo- 
ment cannot be denied. I believe this feeling 
to be rooted in a wrong and shortsighted view 
of the issues at stake in the European war. The 
necessity of combating shortsighted views of the 
majority makes the situation for us German- 
Americans for the moment far from pleasant. 
But of discriminations proposed or attempted 
against German-American citizens I am una- 
ware. Nothing, it seems to me, is more preju- 
dicial to our position as American citizens than 
the clamor for recognition which is so often 
heard at German mass meetings. Nothing 
would be more fatal to our standing in the com- 
munity than the insistence on racial contrasts 
and demands. 

We have every opportunity in this country to 
make felt what is best in German character and 
life. Let us continue to do so ; let us continue 
to have a prominent part in all endeavors for 
political, civic and industrial progress; let us 
stand for the German ideals of honesty, loyalty, 
truthfulness, devotion to work; let us cultivate 
our language, our literature and our art; let us 

4i 



fearlessly defend the cause of our mother coun- 
try against prejudices and aspersions. But let 
us refrain from political organizations which 
would set Germans in this country apart as a 
class by themselves. Such an attempt would 
lead not to the raising but to the degradation of 
the German name in this country. It would 
foster hatred instead of sympathy; and only by 
gaining the sympathy of the majority of the 
American people can we German-Americans 
help the cause of our mother country. 

t Very truly yours, 

Kuno Francke. 



42 



V. THE DUTY OF GERMAN- 
AMERICANS 



iV, THE DUTY OF GERMAN- 
AMERICANS * 

I HAVE received so many and so widely di- 
verging expressions of opinion about my 
recent letter to Congressman Bartholdt that I 
am glad to take the opportunity, in response to 
the kind invitation of the editor of The Father- 
land, of restating my position publicly. 

I may dismiss with a word, as not worthy of 
serious consideration, the unfortunately not in- 
considerable number of letters and editorials 
representing me as a traitor to my native coun- 
try, Germany. These accusations need not be 
answered; they are of public interest only in so 
far as they show that a natural warmth of feel- 
ing for their ancestral land may lead Americans 
of foreign birth to forget what American citi- 
zenship demands of them. 

That this danger is not confined to German- 
Americans is obvious. Many of the sympa- 

* Reprinted from The Fatherland, March 3. 

45 



thizers with Great Britain have gone so far in 
their blind partisanship as to become un-Ameri- 
can. When a man like President Eliot openly 
declares that the United States could not allow 
Germany to vanquish the Allies, when the whole 
drift of his utterances proves that he considers 
loyalty to German ideals and sympathy with 
the German cause as incompatible with loyalty 
to America, this fact alone is sufficient to show 
that partisanship for the Allies tempts even 
recognized leaders of American public opinion 
into views contrary to American interests and 
American ideals. 

I believe that it is the duty of German- 
Americans to combat such un-American views 
eagerly and fearlessly. We must insist that 
any effort to influence public opinion in such a 
way as to encourage our Government to depart 
from the line of strictest justice toward Ger- 
many, is against American interest. And we 
must insist that it is against American ideals to 
expect Americans of German descent to be silent 
when the country to which they owe the best 
things that make them good American citizens 
is maligned and misrepresented as a brutal mili- 
tarist autocracy. 

4 6 



But just as it is our duty as German-Ameri- 
cans to combat unjust attacks against Germany 
and to resist all efforts to align our Govern- 
ment on the side of England and her allies, just 
as much is it our duty to refrain ourselves from 
a violent anti-English propaganda and from ex- 
erting any pressure upon our Government to 
favor the German side in this war. Our Gov- 
ernment is confronted by the hard fact that Eng- 
land, through her fleet, has the power to en- 
force much more than Germany her own policy 
regarding neutral shipping. The one decisive 
move toward changing this situation would be 
war with England. That the calamity of a war 
with England would be deprecated by the vast 
majority of the American people, is beyond dis- 
pute. I believe that the calamity of a war with 
Germany would be deprecated also. Under 
these circumstances our Government must pro- 
ceed with the utmost caution and avoid any step 
which cannot be justified by accepted interna- 
tional usage. This is particularly true with re- 
gard to the exportation of arms and munitions 
of war. Many Americans, whether or not in 
sympathy with Germany, nevertheless regret the 
shipment of arms which is now going on. Yet 

47 



they cannot but see that to change accepted neu- 
trality principles, good or bad intrinsically, in 
the midst of war, will necessarily be taken as a 
measure in favor of one or another of the bel- 
ligerents. The attempt, therefore, to force our 
Government into declaring an embargo on arms 
would either, if unsuccessful, needlessly embar- 
rass the Administration, or if successful, plunge 
the country into a war which it does not want. 
Does not this situation contain the clear lines 
of conduct toward the American Government to 
be followed by German- American citizens ? 

But the civic duties of German-Americans 
arising out of the present disastrous war are not 
confined to these questions of the moment. We 
must think of what the position and the influ- 
ence of German-Americans in our public life 
will be after the war. 

One of my correspondents expresses the hope 
that, as a result of concerted political action of 
German voters, the time will come when the 
German element in the United States will have 
some 125 representatives in Congress, as the 
Irish-American element now has some 170 rep- 
resentatives. I am free to say that I cannot 
think of anything more disastroi s for American 

48 



political life than the possibility of having in 
Congress numerous factions held together by 
racial instincts foreign to the interests of the 
whole people. If there is one thing in which 
American political life may justly claim superi- 
ority to that of most European countries, it is 
the absence of nationalist animosities and sec- 
tional strife. Must we look forward to a time 
when Congress, like the Austrian Reichsrat, 
will be split up into groups of Germans, Irish, 
Czechs, Italians, Jews, British, and other non- 
descript Americans ? That would be the end of 
a large national life, it would be the end of 
American freedom. Germans, it seems to me, 
of all others have the duty of resisting such a 
baneful, separatist movement. For the great- 
est leader whom they have had in this country, 
Carl Schurz, has been foremost among Ameri- 
cans to insist again and again on the need of 
subordinating party considerations to the one 
question of public service and of the fitness of 
the individual man for his office. 

I, too, hope for a stronger assertion of Ger- 
man individuality in American politics as a re- 
sult of this war. For how can a man of Ger- 
man blood fail to be inspired and lifted above 

49 



himself by the wonderful sight which the whole 
German people, from the Kaiser to the last man 
in the trenches, is presenting in its unparalleled 
heroic struggle against a world of enemies. But 
I hope this stronger assertion of German indi- 
viduality will consist in a larger Americanism. 
Germans have often reproached their fellow 
citizens of other stock for considering them a 
kind of second class Americans. And it must 
be admitted that they have often allowed them- 
selves in public affairs, through a certain lack 
of civic initiative, to be pushed unduly into the 
background. Now is the time for us to show 
that we are worthy of the heroic example given 
to us by our brothers in the Fatherland and that 
it is just our German inheritance and training 
which make us American citizens of the high- 
est type. 



50 



VI. THE UNITED STATES AS A 
PEACEMAKER 



VI. THE UNITED STATES AS A 
PEACEMAKER * 

OME time ago I declined to take part in a 
movement which seemed to me fraught 
with evils threatening the domestic peace of this 
country. I declined to join the propaganda, un- 
dertaken by German-Americans, for the estab- 
lishment of an embargo on arms and munitions 
of war, because this propaganda seemed to me 
to inject the issues of the European war into 
internal American politics and to conjure up 
the danger of a bitter strife between a pro-Ger- 
man minority and a pro-British majority in the 
legislative and administrative councils of our 
nation, our States and even our cities. It 
seemed to me of the highest importance that 
at this critical time when we are surrounded by 
a conflict of nations such as the world has not 

* An address delivered before the Economic Club of New 
York on March 30, printed in the Boston Transcript of 
March 31. 

53 



seen before, every American citizen, regardless 
of his descent and racial affinities, should be 
guided by the one consideration of how this 
country at least can be saved from the fearful 
ravages and terrors to which national hatred 
and national passion have subjected nearly all 
of Europe. It seemed to me that if ever there 
was a time for the American people to strive 
for the unification and amalgamation of all the 
different racial elements that go to make up our 
nation, that time is at hand now. For must we 
not hope that when the bloody strife in Europe 
has exhausted itself and a reconstruction of the 
shattered countries is undertaken, America will 
play an important part in helping to bring about 
a just and lasting peace ? But how could Amer- 
ica play this part, unless we ourselves are a 
united nation, unless our Government has the 
support of the whole country in throwing its 
full weight into the balance to secure conditions 
of peace which will be based not only upon 
reason and right in abstracto, but upon a recog- 
nition of the legitimate and vital aspirations of 
the nations now involved in war. 

When the time for such decisions as these 
54 



has come, the American people, as a whole, I 
believe, or at least by far the largest part of it, 
will have recognized that the higher justice in 
this frightful war, the justice that lies in the de- 
fense of superior social conditions, has been on 
the German side; and that, while the spirit 
of " Deutschland iiber Alles," far from being 
a claim to world dominion, has led only to 
zealous work for the inner up-building of Ger- 
many, the spirit of " Britannia rules the waves " 
has indeed come to be a means of English world 
dominion and therefore a menace to the world. 
American public opinion, I believe, will then be 
unanimous, or nearly so, in insisting that certain 
fundamentally just demands likely to be made 
by Germany, demands conducive to the peace of 
nations, be supported by the American Govern- 
ment and by its help be made a part of codified 
international law. 

What I have in mind is not so much the ter- 
ritorial rearrangement which is bound to follow 
this war. As far as Germany is concerned, the 
only just solution of this question seems to me 
the maintenance of the territorial status of Ger- 
many as it existed before the war. And what- 
ever the military outcome of this war may be, 



I hope that the United States will exert its full 
influence to prevent at the coming peace confer- 
ence any infringement upon the territorial in- 
tegrity of Germany and her colonies. 

It would be entirely in line with the tradi- 
tional principles, although not the unvarying 
practice, of American policy to suggest that in 
the territorial rearrangement of Europe certain 
countries of mixed population be given a chance 
by popular vote to decide where they wished to 
belong. But I do not think that the territorial 
status of Germany would be materially affected 
by such a popular vote. For what people has 
ever demonstrated more clearly its determina- 
tion to hold what it has than Germany in the 
present war? There are few parallels in his- 
tory to the single-minded enthusiasm, the bound- 
less devotion, the noble heroism with which the 
whole German nation — including Danes, Poles 
and Alsatians — has risen to defend its soil, and 
defend it triumphantly, against a coalition of 
powers so overwhelming in numbers that the 
mere thought of it may well make faint even the 
stoutest heart. Is it conceivable that a people 
that has fought such a fight should submit for 

56 



any length of time to conditions of peace which 
would cripple its national existence? Is it not 
certain that, if territorial cessions were wrenched 
from Germany as a result of this war, this would 
mean the ushering in of a new era of wars in 
which Germany would try to regain her lost 
provinces and colonies? In the interest of a 
lasting peace, therefore, America must support 
the demand that in the coming peace treaty the 
integrity of the German Empire be respected. 

But this is not the principal point which I wish 
to make. I wish to point out that there is an 
important question in which the traditional pol- 
icy of the United States so completely coincides 
with what it seems to me Germany is bound 
and entitled to demand at the coming peace con- 
ference that mere consistency, if nothing else, 
will force the American Government to support 
Germany in this case.* 

In the year 1785, the United States concluded 
a treaty with Prussia which, in article xxiii, pro- 

* For the following sketch of the traditional American 
policy regarding immunity of private property at sea, I am 
indebted to the account given by my colleague, Professor G. 
G. Wilson, in the publications of the Naval War College, 
International Topics and Discussions, 1905 and 1913. 

57 



vided that in case of war " all merchant and 
trading vessels employed in exchanging the 
products of different places, and thereby render- 
ing the necessaries, conveniences and comforts 
of human life more easy to be obtained and 
more general, shall be allowed to pass free and 
unmolested; and neither of the contracting 
powers shall grant or issue any commission to 
any private armed vessels, empowering them 
to take or destroy such trading vessels or inter- 
rupt such commerce." 

In his message of Dec. 2, 1823, President 
Monroe advocated certain international pro- 
posals which should look to " the abolition of 
private war on the sea." In his message of 
Dec. 2, 1856, President Pierce advocated an 
amendment to the Declaration of Paris to the 
effect " that the private property of subjects 
and citizens of a belligerent on the high seas 
shall be exempt from seizure by public armed 
vessels of the other belligerent, except it be 
contraband." This amendment was lost, ow- 
ing to Great Britain's unwillingness to accede 
to it. In 1 87 1 the United States concluded a 
treaty with Italy, article xii of which provided 

58 



that " in the unfortunate event of a war be- 
tween the high contracting parties the private 
property of their respective citizens and sub- 
jects, with the exception of contraband of war, 
shall be exempt from capture or seizure on the 
high seas or elsewhere by the armed vessels or 
by the military forces of either party." On 
April 28, 1904, the Congress of the United 
States passed a resolution calling upon the Presi- 
dent to " endeavor to bring about an under- 
standing among the principal maritime powers 
with a view of incorporating into the permanent 
law of civilized nations the principle of the ex- 
emption of all private property at sea, not con- 
traband of war, from capture or destruction by 
belligerents." At the First Hague Conference, 
the American delegation, through its chairman, 
Mr. Andrew D. White, tentatively introduced 
this principle for informal consideration. At 
the Second Hague Conference of 1907, Mr. 
Choate, chairman of the American delegation, 
formally brought up this proposition for official 
action, introducing it with the words : " This 
proposition involves a principle which has been 
advocated from the beginning by the Govern- 
ment of the United States and urged by it upon 

59 



other nations, and which is most warmly cher- 
ished by the American people." After long 
deliberation, this American motion, as is well 
known, was lost by a vote of 21 to 11, the 
United States, Germany, Austria and Turkey 
voting in the affirmative, England, France, 
Russia and Japan in the negative. 

It is clear, then, that from 1785 on to the 
Second Hague Conference the United States 
and Germany have consistently stood for the 
principle of the immunity of private property 
at sea and that England as persistently has stood 
out against it. The reason for this difference 
of attitude is obvious. It is to be found in the 
fact that England with her gigantic navy and 
with her unbroken chain of fortifications all 
around the world has been in a position until 
now and wishes to remain in a position to main- 
tain her dominion of the sea and her world 
trade even in time of war, whereas the United 
States and Germany, with their world trade 
insufficiently protected by naval armaments, nat- 
urally seek protection for their trade during 
war time in the freedom of the sea. 

What this English dominion of the sea means 
60 



both to Germany and the United States, the 
present war has demonstrated only too clearly. 
The few commerce destroyers which Germany 
had on the ocean at the beginning of the war 
have been swept off the sea; and English ship- 
ping, apart from the war zone around the Brit- 
ish Isles, is going on unmolested in all parts of 
the world. German over-sea trade, on the 
other hand, has been entirely blocked; and now 
England proposes to throttle neutral, and above 
all, American trade with Germany, in order to 
starve out the whole of the German civilian 
population. England has rejected the Ameri- 
can proposition which Germany accepted: 
namely, that the German proclamation of a 
war zone around the British Isles, although it 
was only an answer to the English proclamation 
declaring the whole of the North Sea a war 
zone, be retracted if England were willing to 
admit foodstuffs for the German civilian popu- 
lation on neutral ships. She has thereby flatly 
ignored the American attempt to assert the 
rights of neutrals on the sea. England has 
made practically every kind of goods destined 
for or coming from Germany contraband of 
war, and thereby has cut off a large part of 

61 



American trade hitherto considered protected 
by neutrality rules. She has, in other words, 
not only gone far beyond the accepted rules of 
the conduct of war on sea in fighting Germany, 
but she has also inflicted serious and avoidable 
injury on American trade and is consistently 
ignoring American protests against her infringe- 
ments of the rights of neutrals. 

This is a situation which, it seems to me, will 
lead to an entirely new turn of American public 
opinion. England's dominion of the sea has 
become so flagrantly aggressive that the Amer- 
ican people will demand of its Government to 
take a definite stand against it. It certainly 
must cause the public to stop and think once 
more on the question of an embargo on arms 
and munitions of war, not as an act of justice 
towards both belligerents, but as a means of en- 
forcing neutrality rules against English en- 
croachment. And I am sure that American 
opinion will support the Government if, when 
the time for peace negotiations has come, it 
stands with Germany for the immunity of pri- 
vate property at sea and also for a definition 
of contraband of war which will exempt from it 
62 



all articles destined for the consumption of the 
civilian population. By doing so, our Govern- 
ment will not only follow what has been the 
traditional policy of the United States from its 
very beginning, but it will serve in a striking 
and effective manner the cause of peace among 
nations. For the universal establishment of 
the freedom of ocean trade even in time of 
war will diminish the occasions for war between 
maritime nations, it will inevitably lead to the 
reduction of naval armaments, it will do away 
with the necessity of the naval supremacy of 
any one power, it will benefit equally the com- 
mercial interests of all trading nations, it will 
restore the feeling of security and permanence 
of international relations now so severely shat- 
tered. 

Who will have the heart to say that a war, 
even if it was waged and carried to a successful 
issue for such a principle as the delivery of the 
sea from the naval domination of any one 
power, was a benefit to mankind? Its name- 
less horrors, the moral degradation and physical 
destruction wrought by it, the seed of vicious- 
ness, hatred, and ruin sown by it, can never be 
atoned for by any advantages and blessings that 

63 



may accrue from it. This, however, we may 
say: If the United States and Germany at the 
end of this war should succeed in incorporating 
the freedom of the sea into the permanent law 
of civilized nations, they will have benefited 
mankind, in spite of the war. 



6 4 



VII. GEBET 



VII. GEBET * 

1st dies Europas Ende ? — Dann, o Gott, 
Errette gnadig meines Volkes Geist 
Aus Weltenunterganges grauser Nacht. 
Fiihr' ihn aus Wut und Wahn der alten Welt 
Verjungt empor, gereinigt und verklart, 
Auf dass er strahlend leuchte neuer Zeit, 
Und hiramlisch sich die Erde neu entfalte. 
Geist meines Volks, du sinkest nicht zu Staub. 



* Reprinted from The Boston Herald of May 14. 

67 



PRAYER 

Translated by Katharine Royce. 

Is this the end of Europe? — Then, O God, 

In mercy save the spirit of my folk 

From the dread night that overwhelms the 

world. 
Forth from the rage and wrath of former days 
Lead it, renewed, enlightened, purified, 
Until its radiance lights the future times, 
And the new heaven and earth shall dawn at 

last. 
Soul of my folk, thou canst not turn to dust. 



68 



VIII. GERMANIA MARTYR 



GERMANIA MARTYR* 

Mein Volk, nun will es tagen, 
Nun blicke stolz und frei ! 
Nun konnen sie nicht mehr fragen, 
Ob rein dein Ringen sei. 

Nun stehst du ganz alleine, 
Nun bist du gottlich gross, 
Nun strahlst du im Glorienscheine 
Von Martyrerheldenlos. 

Nun steigst du siegumflossen 
Empor aus blutiger Zeit, 
Und ringsumher ergossen 
Liegt Himmels-Seligkeit. 

* Written on May 21, the date of Italy's entrance into the 
war ; published in The Boston Herald of May 22. 



71 



GERMANIA MARTYR 

Translated by Sylvester Baxter 

My Folk, now dawns the morning, 
It shows thee proud and free ! 

No more they ask, with scorning, 
If just thy struggle be. 

Now all alone thou 'rt standing — 

August, divinely great; 
Thy martyrdom commanding 

Meet recompense from Fate. 

Now risest thou, victorious, 

Above this blood-drenched time, 

Transfigured in a glorious 
And heavenly light sublime. 



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